


gold in your hand, you don't know it exists

by potter



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Friends With Benefits, Introspective blowjobs, M/M, Yearning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:34:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26302768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potter/pseuds/potter
Summary: Jeonghan leans back in his chair and looks Seungcheol up and down, considering. “It’s not like you’re pathetic all the time.”“Sure,” Seungcheol says, shrugging on his coat.“It’s only around Jihoon.” And then, after a thoughtful pause: “Which I guess makes it all the time.”
Relationships: Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Lee Jihoon | Woozi
Comments: 15
Kudos: 100
Collections: K-Pop Ficmix 2020





	gold in your hand, you don't know it exists

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greyskieslatenights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyskieslatenights/gifts).
  * Inspired by [waiting to see you in the afternoon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16659478) by [greyskieslatenights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyskieslatenights/pseuds/greyskieslatenights). 



> @greyskieslatenights: i loved how atmospheric the original story was - i kept going back and trying to get that moody, kind of melancholy, 'i want you more than you want me and have to live with that' vibe right. i hope you enjoy 💖

_come to the studio,_ Seungcheol’s phone bleeps, and Jeonghan sighs. 

“ _What?”_ Seungcheol snaps, too defensive to be anything but. Joshua laughs. It’s only a little malicious. 

Jeonghan waves his hand up and down. “No, no, we don’t have time to get into it. You have to go.” Something about the way he says ‘go’ makes Seungcheol feel like an insect writhing beneath a pin. 

He turns his phone face-down on the table. It’s not like there’s anything incriminating on the screen, and they’re sitting at the furthest table from the door, masks up, hair down. But it still makes him uncomfortable, the phone, the message, blinking on and off for anyone to see. To _interpret._ “I don’t _have_ to go,” he says, poking petulantly at the grill. “It’s not like that.” 

Jeonghan opens his mouth, but shuts up when Joshua puts a hand on his shoulder. They exchange one of those weird telepathic looks they developed while Seungcheol was off wrangling the kids and schmoozing CEOs and delivering their group to glory. Joshua twitches his eyebrows. Jeonghan cocks his head. Seungcheol hates them. 

“Let’s just drop it,” Joshua says once they’ve disentangled their slimy mental tentacles and joined Seungcheol back in the land of the mostly sane. “How was your parent’s house?” 

“ _Fine_ ,” Seungcheol says. He’s trying to seem moody enough to guilt Jeonghan into paying. “Dad started a garden, he’s really-”

_Ding, ding, ding!_

Three sets of eyes laser in on one innocent phone.

Joshua can barely keep the amusement out of his voice. "Go ahead and check that.” 

“Yeah,” Jeonghan agrees, not even trying. “You really should see what he wants.” 

“I’m _eating_ , it can _wait._ ” 

_Ding! Ding! Ding!!!!!!!_

“Hmm,” Joshua wonders. “Can it?” 

Here’s the thing: Seungcheol is perfectly capable of having dinner with his two asshole friends. He does _not_ live at the beck and call of a slightly dented iPhone X. He _is_ an independent adult with a life all his own. He _will_ or _will not_ check his messages _as he so chooses._

Just: “It could be the CEO, or my mom… Shut _up,_ Yoon Jeonghan.” 

_come to the studio hyung_

_[image]_  
_[image]  
_ _[image]_

Joshua reaches across the table to snag his beer with a cheerful, “Tell him hi!” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Seungcheol says, standing up.

Jeonghan leans back in his chair and looks Seungcheol over, considering. “It’s not like you’re pathetic all the time.” 

“Sure.” Seungcheol shrugs on his coat. His phone beeps again. _1 new message with image attachment_.

“It’s only around Jihoon.” And then, after a thoughtful pause: “Which I guess makes it all the time.” 

Seungcheol doesn’t know how to reply without losing the infinitesimal amount of face he still possesses, so he just leaves. They both cackle as he walks away.

Three more texts come in during the taxi ride. The driver’s a sweet old man who won’t stop talking about the LG Twins and his son’s girlfriend’s dog allergy. Seungcheol keeps his phone in his pocket.

 _Love_ _yourself,_ a small, traitorous, Jeonghan-pitched voice whispers, _stop doing this, you moron._ As always, he ignores it. 

They pull up to the studio half an hour after the first text. It’s almost midnight and there’s barely anyone around, but he still feels paranoid in a grimy kind of way. _Seventeen leader found lurking in alley with a semi -_ not the worst press they’ve ever gotten, but close. A man sitting in front of the 7-11 glowers at him. Seungcheol pulls up his mask and walks on. 

He feels better once he's inside. Seungcheol likes coming to Universe Factory at night: they always keep the lighting low, shadows made out of LED purple and white, and it makes everything feel kind of surreal. Everything always feels kind of surreal, but it’s nice when the outside matches the inside. He toes off his shoes and tosses his coat on top of the pile, and then hesitates in the space between the couch and Jihoon’s chair.

“Hey hyung,” says Jihoon’s chair. Seungcheol can’t see the occupant, but if he had to guess - shirt on, legs crossed, eyes glued to the screen. A body that is, contrary to what those texts and those pictures suggest, distinctly unruffled. He’s not too disappointed: this has happened before.

“Hey yourself,” he says, choosing couch. 

Jihoon snorts like Seungcheol said something funny. Turns his chair so that Seungcheol can see the edges of him: eyes, lips, neck. “How was dinner?” 

“I didn’t have time to eat much.” And then, turning himself into a sulky, whining thing: “You should take me out.” 

That might have worked on the others, but Jihoon’s known Seungcheol too long to find his bullshit charming. “I already ate.” 

“You haven’t moved in 12 hours.”

“Delivery. And I went home to shower. Stop making that face, I’m not gonna buy you food. Here, listen to this.” 

This part of the conversation apparently _over_ , Jihoon is already turning back to the computer. Seungcheol reluctantly puts his tongue in his mouth. He’s starting to get why he was lured over, and he’s kind of offended that Jihoon thought he had to use thirst traps instead of just saying _hyung, can you come distract me from myself?_ Because Seungcheol's not really here to offer _company_. (He's the only one who gets summoned like this - he’s checked. That shouldn’t make him so shivery-happy, but sometimes petty feels good. Jihoon always indulges him.)

Jihoon gets like this sometimes when he’s stressed or bored or just wants to see Seungcheol squirm. It’s the former this time: they’re still in the early stages of album production, and he and Bumzu have been going back and forth about where to take the title track. They're not exactly fighting, things are just awkward and sour. Nobody else knows what to do, so nobody does anything. Jihoon, who's allergic to asking for help, says he's doing fine. He hasn’t started sleeping in the studio, at least, but he’s snapping at the kids over minor annoyances, sighing more than usual. He needs a distraction. He doesn’t need Seungcheol. But he needs a distraction.

That instrumental track he’s spent the last three days obsessing over (‘he’s _singing it in his sleep,_ hyung, I can hear him through the _walls’)_ starts rattling the speakers. Bumzu says it’s too fast; Jihoon says it’s too slow. Seungcheol thinks it’s great. But that's been true about everything Jihoon does.

“Are you still stuck on that one part?” He scoots to the edge of the couch and peers around Jihoon’s chair, trying to see his screen. “The _dah-dah-duh-duh-duh_ thing at the end of the bridge?” He pitches his voice up into Junhui’s falsetto. 

Jihoon doesn’t perk up - he isn’t Seokmin - but he nudges his microphone at Seungcheol. “Do that again. No, like before, the inflection on the last syllable. Yeah, yeah. Wait, let me record-” 

They go through it a few times, Seungcheol gauging his performance by how rigid or relaxed Jihoon’s shoulders go. By the third time around he’s fully leaning back in the chair, more relaxed than Seungcheol’s seen him in a while, which isn’t much, but it's still something. Junhui’s probably gonna make that face he makes when he hears Seungcheol’s imitation, but playing it back it sounds good, sounds like something Seungcheol would want to have his name, their name, _Seventeen_ attached to. This part has always seemed like magic: he opens his mouth, and Jihoon spins whatever comes out into pure gold. 

“You know,” Jihoon says absently, “you do good on guides. Yours always come out the best.”

Seungcheol glows, but it’s okay, because Jihoon doesn’t see. “You make me sound good.”

“This could work,” Jihoon’s mumbling instead of listening. “If we just speed it up here… And then…”

Seungcheol likes watching Jihoon work. It’s not like, a sex thing - he’s pretty sure there’s no such thing as a Protools fetish, and if there was he definitely wouldn’t be the one in the group jerking off on a Launchpad Pro. It’s just, Jihoon turns into a different person when he’s making music, as if some primordial EDM god descended from the heavens to guide him. He gets sharper, both with his words but also the way he moves and even hears, like he’s accessing the world on a slightly higher frequency than anybody else. Like he can hear things that Seungcheol can’t. And maybe if Seungcheol watches close enough, he’ll be able to, too.

Or maybe he just likes watching Jihoon.

(He'd been skeptical the first time Jihoon stood outside of Bumzu's studio, passing a flash drive from hand to hand and biting his lip so hard it almost bled. It had been _weird_ to see Jihoon, their little Jihoon, so pale, and Seungcheol had told him so. He should've been supportive - Doyoung was, but at that point Doyoung was all but confirmed leader and he'd always been so much _better_ at that stuff, anyway. 

But Seungcheol, who'd known what empathy meant but not what it felt like, had only echoed Jihoon's doubts until they must have sounded like a Greek chorus booming his faults back at him, _are you sure it's good enough, maybe not yet, I don't know._ He hadn't meant anything by it, he just didn't want Jihoon to get hurt. And if he had to get hurt, it was better coming from Seungcheol instead of anybody else. 

And maybe he was jealous, too, that Jihoon had found a new alter to worship at, that he talked about what happened in the studio with this kind of hypnotic awe, like he'd seen the _truth_ and couldn't ever be _ordinary_ after that; that Jihoon, for the first time, was different from Seungcheol, and worst of all, that he'd wanted to be different-

He'd been 15 years old and a total shithead. He likes to think that he's made up for himself in the years since. Most of the time he's pretty sure he has.) 

Jihoon fucks around with the backing track for a while longer before he finally turns around to look at Seungcheol. If this was a romance, this is the part where Seungcheol’s breath would leave his body, white doves fluttering and heavenly choirs choir-ing. But Seungcheol’s life trends more towards absurdism than romcom, so instead of Prince Woozi it’s just Jihoon, who’s vomited on his shoes more than twice. Tonight he's washed out from the neon and the all-nighter. Pale, kind of sweaty. Bags under his eyes in the shape of two half-moons. 

This is when Seungcheol likes Jihoon the most. Drunk with exhaustion. About to unspool. 

“Thanks,” Jihoon says. “For coming over.” 

Seungcheol slouches into the couch, picks up a pop socket somebody left behind and starts fiddling with it. “Is that why you asked me to come over? To help you out?” The implicit double meaning would be funny if he was with anyone else. It’s still funny, but it’s other things, too. 

Jihoon doesn’t look at anybody else the way he’s looking at Seungcheol now, condescension mixed with just enough fondness to take away the sting. “Is that why you came? To help me out?” 

“Shut up.” 

Jihoon just smiles. “You look good.” 

“Thanks,” Seungcheol says, and then he flushes. 

He wishes Jihoon would tell him when they cross over into this part of the night. Or maybe after those pictures, they always were, and Seungcheol just let himself get distracted, which was always a part of Jihoon’s plan because Jihoon likes Seungcheol the most when he’s too disoriented to function. Maybe Seungcheol’s problem is that he doesn’t know how to compartmentalize, so that all of his feelings spill into each other and he can’t sort out where jealous begins and horny ends and there’s just enough melancholy bleeding in there that he doesn’t know _how_ he feels. Maybe he needs to stop being introspective and start paying attention to the fact that Jihoon and his dick are right over there.

“You always look good.” Jihoon’s leaning further back in his chair, letting his legs fall open. His hands have dropped down to his knees, framing those The Grind Never Stops thighs. Seungcheol’s eyes dart down and then back up, where he finds Jihoon watching with that same arch smirk. He’s always known exactly how to handle him. Seungcheol’s never known anything. 

He makes a noise when Jihoon pushes himself off the chair, wanders ( _saunters_ is better, but he’s not the lyricist) over to the couch. The noise is small, and it’s weak, and it makes Jihoon’s lips twist from a sneer into an expression Seungcheol hopes he’s never shown to anyone else, although he’s not really counting on it. He looms over Seungcheol, and in the uncertain light he looks, at best, frayed. He’s been underplaying how stressed he is. Seungcheol’s mouth is dry. 

“Easy, now.” Jihoon hasn’t touched him yet. Seungcheol needs to be touched, but Jihoon hasn’t. Won’t, until Seungcheol does what he does now, sways forward like a drunk man, presses his forehead against Jihoon’s soft-firm belly and lets it rest there. He can tell that Jihoon’s still soft, and he doesn’t start to fill up until Seungcheol’s nudging those cheap sweatpants he always wears to the studio down over his hips, still so bony for all the hours he spends in the gym.

“Do you want me to,” Seungcheol says, same as every time. The answer is always the same, but Seungcheol wouldn’t care if Jihoon said _no_ \- he just likes being here, close to Jihoon, without anybody or anything trying to steal attention. Likes being the only thing that Jihoon can think about, at least for a little bit.

Above him, Jihoon pauses, and lets his head fall to his chest. Same as every time.

He stands in front of the couch unmoving, and Seungcheol, who wants to please and be told he has pleased, mouths a little at the top of his dick until Jihoon sighs, and then he dips his head further to get his lips around the tip. He stays there, not moving, waiting for a signal. 

Now, Jihoon reaches out and touches Seungcheol, in the slight dip between the base of his skull and his neck. It seems hesitant, but he does this every time, too. That doesn’t mean it isn’t hesitant. Seungcheol shudders.

It's the same, it's always the same: Seungcheol swallowing him greedily, Jihoon grabbing the back of Seungcheol’s neck and squeezing in lieu of a moan, a holdover from the days of unlocked showers and top bunks. The ache goes right to Seungcheol’s dick; he’s been half-hard since he saw Jihoon, since the taxi, since he picked up his phone and saw the name on his screen. He starts to think about what Jeonghan said, but then he would be thinking about Jeonghan while Jihoon’s balls are on his chin, so he grabs the back of Jihoon’s thighs instead. 

Jihoon braces his legs against either side of Seungcheol's and kneads hard into his shoulders, the skin and the bone. He leaves it up to Seungcheol to do all the work, only occasionally giving him a shallow thrust or an encouraging groan. Other people would probably say that he's selfish, or lazy, or just an asshole, but Seungcheol doesn't need Jihoon to fuck his throat to get himself there. (Not that Seungcheol is. His needs don't come into this part.)

They’ve done this enough that Seungcheol knows what to do, when to speed up and when to stop, tonguing the underside of his dick, fingers fanning the spit-wet skin of his inner thighs, feeling, rather than hearing, Jihoon’s moans. It’s not exactly perfunctory, but by now, Jihoon’s is as close to a second body as Seungcheol could get. He knows with a bone-deep certainty how Jihoon would react if he did this, what sound he would make if he did that, and that knowledge makes Seungcheol feel itchy, too big for his skin. He gags as he takes Jihoon deeper, but that cross-eyed burn is better than anything else he could feel right now. He starts to float. 

Jihoon meets his eyes, and then, like he knows what Seungcheol’s thinking, he looks back up at the stretch of wall above his head. His hand loosens in Seungcheol’s hair. But Seungcheol doesn’t want to be alone, and he wants to be selfish, too, because Jihoon is the only place he's allowed to be selfish. He reaches up and grabs Jihoon’s wrist, guides it back down to the back of his skull; his hand still on top of, but not holding, Jihoon’s, he moves his own head forward, and then shoves it back, forward, and then back, choking himself on Jihoon’s cock. It's not as big as Seungcheol's but it's thicker, and his throat constricts trying as he tries not to gag. Above him there’s a small noise that might be concern - but probably not, because then Jihoon’s coming on Seungcheol’s tongue and down his throat and on the corner of his mouth as he pulls out and tucks himself back into his shorts, not hurriedly but not really basking in the moment. Seungcheol doesn’t grimace when he swallows. 

“Do you need me to,” Jihoon says, gesturing vaguely downward. "Are you okay." 

Seungcheol knows what that would be like, too. Any other night he’d take Jihoon into his lap with his face hidden against his shoulder, bite-licking the one spot on Seungcheol’s neck they both know will get him off in under five minutes. They don’t kiss. There was a window where they could have started, but they didn’t, and so they don’t. Jihoon is softer, though, when it’s Seungcheol’s turn, and usually Seungcheol likes the soft. 

But for some reason the that's an unbearable thought right now; he’d rather be back in the dorm working himself with his own tight fist than here, watching Jihoon watch their shadows moving back and forth against the wall.

"Better than okay," Seungcheol says. 

Jihoon only hesitates for a second before he shrugs. “Alright.” 

On the desk, Jihoon’s phone goes _ding_. Jihoon picks it up. Seungcheol sinks back into the couch, grabbing the same pillow to hold over his lap. He watches Jihoon. Jihoon smiles at his phone. 

He hangs around for another half hour. Jihoon orders them food, and posts a picture of Seungcheol balancing a Coke on his forehead to Weverse. He complains about it, but eventually he lets Seungcheol bundle them both into a taxi, stares out the window and puts his hand on Seungcheol's knee, falls asleep on his shoulder when they cross the bridge. Seungcheol takes off his shoes and his coat, and lays him down in his bed. Jihoon falls asleep before his head hits the pillow. He hasn't looked peaceful all day, but he looks peaceful here, dreaming. 

Seungcheol wants to brush the hair off of his forehead and press a kiss there instead. He wants Jihoon to call him at noon instead of midnight, and he wants Jihoon to kiss him like he means it. It's not new, this relationship they have. Neither is this need, or the absence that feeds it.

God, he's so fond. 

He crawls into the bed next to Jihoon, and he stares at the ceiling, and he wonders if it feels like this for Jihoon, too. But Jihoon sleeps through the night, and in the morning he's gone.

Once, right after they debuted, a journalist asked Seungcheol to describe Jihoon. It was their first ever magazine interview - they were embarrassingly excited - and Seungcheol spent what he remembers as hours describing the way Jihoon looks when he makes music, the way he bleeds himself dry trying to teach them all how to dance perfectly, not just individually but as a team; the way he takes that word, _team_ , and turns it into a mantra, into a way of life, into the very air he breathes, how he-

The quote they went with was “Woozi is a very important member of Seventeen!” 

Next to Seungcheol’s picture were the words “S.Coups is a fun person to mess around with”. He remembers asking Jihoon if he’d rambled on, too, and Jihoon giving him the weirdest look before responding, “No, I just used the line they told me to say. You didn’t?” He can’t remember what he said back. 

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](http://twitter.com/healpulse/)


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